Feeling the warmth of the sun on a cloudy day. A glimpse into a blind billy goat's unique, ever changing perspectives.

09 22 11 Can You Feel It? September 22, 2011

Can you smell it? You have to be able to smell it at least? Yup, that’s it. It’s in the air. That sharp, crisp feeling. That cool crisp smell. That reminder that we are soon going to be freezing our butts off.

Yes, that’s it! I knew you knew what I was talking about.

I always thought that the twenty-first was the first day of fall, but my sister in Florida tells me that it is the twenty-second. Now I am all confused. How would she know anyway? Do they even have a fall in Florida? Isn’t it like, umm, summer, three hundred and sixty four days a year down there? Please, give me a break sis. Smile. Either way, it is fall, and we are on our way up around the final bend. The final turn.

I remember when I was a youngstah, the trees on my road would turn colors in unison. The trees on the start of my road would turn first, and they would follow suit until the end trees would turn last. How does Mother Nature do things like that? Is she psychic? Does she know something that we do not?

Fall is another season that seems to have its own characteristics that are unmistakably hers and hers alone. We have already had a couple mornings here in the low thirties, and that was last week when it was still summer.

I am still hanging on though. I still have shorts on today. I am on fall strike! Picket line and all. I just can’t let go of summer yet. It is still engraved in my non-migrational mush melon.

I can see myself gradually sliding into fall mode, and I predict that it will fully engulf me, sometime around December twenty-first. Just in time to deny the arrival of winter. How convenient.

Fall does hold with it some special times though. I used to run all over the country side here in central Maine, and the fall foliage was just spectacular. I would get to see the differences in the change in relation with different areas of the state. The mountains would show off their fall fury, and then a month later, the coast. It really was a never ending months worth of brilliance. I can still see the oranges, and the reds and yellows a little. Not so much the greens and browns though.

The colors of fall will live inside of me for all time. I am sure I am not alone when I say this. It is just something about the fall colors. It is like you can just walk up and take a bite out of the trees. Like a starburst fruit foliage.

Well, it is just a matter of time until the pumpkins come rolling out of the gardens, and the fall harvests are complete.

The farmers around our town have been chopping corn all week, and the crows are chattering and singing up a storm. I just wish they would hold back on the cow manure until it gets a little colder if you please? And thank you.

Our lady of autumn waits patiently every year until the final buzzer of summer sounds out. The changes are stark, and they are sweet. Such a wonderful event that happens every single year.

I had a lot of fun after we bought our first digital camera back a few years ago when my grandson was born. I think I must have taken about a jazillion pics of the state in different times of the year. I probably took more of fall than the other three seasons put together. I can still remember most of them. Nothing filled up my view finder on my camera quite like the colors of autumn. It seems that I have been able to hold that same feeling for the fall as I did when I was younger.

Thank God for the maples. Autumn just wouldn’t be the same without you.

We have a stretch on our road of about an eighth of a mile or so. This area has maple trees on both sides of the road. During the summer months, it is quite dark when you drive through the area, because the leaves are just so thick that the sun doesn’t have a chance of getting through.

In the fall with the change in the leaves, it’s just quite a sight to ride through it. It’s like going through a brilliant fluorescent tunnel. I was in awe of it every single year. Just one more way that our lady of autumn seems to reach in and pull my soul out of summer. She does it every year, the little devil.

One of the reasons my family moved to Sheridan, Wyoming, from Tucson, Arizona, in 1973 was the lack of seasons. There was no autumn with its falling leaves that changed colors, no winter with its snow, and the summers were extremely hot. Needless to say, I'm happy to be living here.Abbie Johnson Taylor, Author of We Shall Overcomehttp://abbiescorneroftheworld.blogspot.comhttp://www.abbiejohnsontaylor.com